This is the third post on this topic that's made the front page:
Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
11–20 of 534 posts
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#12When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.
Someone senior? Yeah right, it'll be some HR patsy or just "the person responsible has left the company before this article".
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#13I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change. From anecdotal evidence I feel like nothing really changes. It's mostly people in some bubble that get really upset and then a week later everyone forgets what exactly they were upset about.
The Uber CEO did withdraw from the U.S. President's economic council after widespread outcry from a vocal portion of customers and a high proportion of employees. This is not an example of a major change, but it did demonstrate that Uber is responsive to public opinion.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#14The problem is that men misconstrue the natural social and friendly tendency of most women as sexual advances. There needs to be more education in this respect with men. Just because a woman is chatty and willing to collaborate doesn't mean she wants to sleep with you. I know that sounds sexist, but honestly, I think women just are naturally or at least culturally (does the difference matter in this case, really?) mo…
If you read the original blog post, you'll see your comments have nothing to do with what actually happened.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#15Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#16When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.
I think one senior person isn't enough in a case like this. What is described here is an entire malfunctioning department, which in my opinion, couldn't be attributed to anywhere below the C-level. Sure perhaps there is somebody who can be fingered "VP of HR" or whatever, but anybody who has so little visibility into their department that this type of scenario could evolve is clearly not auditing what's happening levels beneath them.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#17I wonder how much impact this will have. If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed, or if they will make a lot of noise about investigation and saying how terrible they feel and not have anything change.
Someone here once asked me how I differentiated between a corporation run by people and a corporation structured as an institution. In the latter there are processes put in place that bind the people in the corporation to specific rules and constraints, and the consequences of not following the rules is well defined and not up to interpretation.
An example of that would be a sexual harassment protocol that would be activated by making a claim to the protocol director. That position would typically report to the general counsel or the CEO. That director would have 30 days from the time of the report to capture statements from all of the named parties, copies of all company email from all named parties, and any chat session transcripts. The protocol director would then have another 30 days to seek out any corroborating information from people likely to be affected and then would provide the CEO (or General Counsel) with a report on whether or not harassment was deemed to occur. If it had, they would be required to remove from management responsibility the perpetrator on a first offense, and to separate from the company on a second offense. There would be no consideration for their "performance" against their goals.
Its all very mechanical, there isn't a lot of leeway for misinterpretation and the punishment is fixed without recourse. Of course there are similar punishments doled out to protocol enforcers should they attempt to mitigate the protocol.
Institutions are interlocking processes and regulations which insure the proper functioning and survival of the institution in the face of imperfect people being in charge of executing the institution's mission.
Corporations of people run on loyalty, friendship, and leverage. In such a corporation, justice is only found the exercise of friendship or leverage. And greater friendship or greater leverage can steer the result regardless of its merits.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#18The problem is that men misconstrue the natural social and friendly tendency of most women as sexual advances. There needs to be more education in this respect with men. Just because a woman is chatty and willing to collaborate doesn't mean she wants to sleep with you. I know that sounds sexist, but honestly, I think women just are naturally or at least culturally (does the difference matter in this case, really?) mo…
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#19One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is not your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#20The problem is that men misconstrue the natural social and friendly tendency of most women as sexual advances. There needs to be more education in this respect with men. Just because a woman is chatty and willing to collaborate doesn't mean she wants to sleep with you. I know that sounds sexist, but honestly, I think women just are naturally or at least culturally (does the difference matter in this case, really?) mo…
The problem is that there seems to be a terrible, unbelievably toxic culture pervading nearly every department at Uber.
Also, "I know that sounds sexist" is a fucking terrible caveat.